State of the Blog, not that anyone cares

Hey, I've found a new toy, and as my days at U of I are more-or-less over, I'm not sure whether to rename this blog, scrap it, or what. Anyone interested should check out mfstrong.tumblr.com for what I'm doing these days, mostly on fascism and history.

Utterly surprised

Remember this toolbox? Turns out his is climbing the Republican ladder pretty quickly. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, the FBI arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility. (source)

I expect great things from this young man. Great things.

That was the week that sucked.

The MA-SEN election has been dealt with better elsewhere, so I'm going to restrict my comments to the recent SCOTUS decision Citizens United v FEC. A few thoughts, then:

1. This is why elections matter. Two of the five justices in the majority were appointed by G.W. Bush after his 2004 re-election. 2 out of 5. Enough to swing the court. The only justice appointed by Obama so far wrote a dissent challenging the current views on corporations as people and money as speech. Elections. Matter.
2. The Roberts Court is ideologically driven. There's an excellent piece over at The American Prospect about the trend of the Roberts Court to take the side of the corporation over the citizen and the strong against the weak. Pandagon noticed this trend all the way back in may.
3. This is not the end of the world. Man up and stop saying things like "I'm going to move to Canada" or "America...RIP." We somehow managed to pull ourselves out of a similar state of affairs once already.
   

Blasphemy.

I'm going to come out and say that the Conservative Bible Project is both blasphemous and idolatrous. Infact, there's a passage in Revelation that deals with this (Rev 22:18-19):

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book.

Which seems to me to be exactly what the CBP is doing. Let's take a look at Philemon, one of the books they've translated.

The KJV Philemon Chapter 1, verse 1:

Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ, and Timothy our brother, unto Philemon our dearly beloved, and fellowlabourer,

And the same in the CBP translation:

Paul, in prison for Jesus Christ, and our brother Timothy, say to our friend and fellow volunteer Philemon,

The reason? ""fellowlabourer" is misleading today, and falsely connotes socialism."

Yes, fellowlaborer, laborers in the vineyard, all of that is to be replaced by "volunteer." Now, I have a serious problem with this. Paul, the author of Philemon, was concerned with nothing less than the complete transformation of the human being through the power of Jesus Christ. "Volunteers" doesn't do justice to Paul's vision.

And then there's the politics. This tremendous act of arrogance is all about politics, after all. "The Greek language may have been inadequate to convey the immoral overtones" goes the analysis for one verse. This is along the lines of "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," in terms of mind-boggling double think. Attempting a translation of the Bible, apparently from the original Greek, and deciding that the original is inadequate? Quite a feat. And that's not even the most nakedly political part. the CBP translation of Mark 3:2 is:

The Liberals watched Jesus to see if they might catch and accuse him of healing on the Sabbath.

Yes, the CBP uses Liberals for Pharisees. The note on that verse reads:

Tentatively using "Elite" rather than "Pharisees" or skeptical "teachers" for more modern accessability. See talk. - "Self proclaimed elite" = "liberals", fits modern terminology, see talk.

Words. Mean. Things. Words mean things even when they're in dead languages referring to events long past. You cannot change the wording, blatantly or insidiously, because 4 writers in the ancient Near East were more concerned with the good news of salvation than the invisible hand. From the Parable of the Sower:

KJV: And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred

CBP:"But some seed fell upon good soil and produced a great deal of fruit, thirty, sixty, even one-hundred times the original investment."

This is inappropriate. It is simply an excuse to get the word "investment" in there, to make it seem like Jesus was a free-marketer. It is blasphemous, there's no way around it.

Mentorship

According to my boss, modern philosophy is "something they did to Hume and Hobbes and now I have to learn it."

Just a thought.

On whatever Deutsche Welle radio show our NPR station carries, they were talking this morning about Italy's free speech problem, and had an Italian journalist talking about how free American speech is.

I think, in some respects, he's right. There's no way American's would elect someone president who owned his own network of TV stations; I think we'd wince at it the same way we'd wince at electing a preacher (and, no, Huckabee's success in Arkansas and the generally high religious sentiment in this country notwithstanding, I don't think we would). And, yes, we have more robust legal freedom of speech protections than most people.

What we have are massive barriers to entry. Of course, the Founders couldn't have seen that coming, but the result of over a century of media consolidation is a very high price to enter the marketplace of ideas in any meaningful way, and it's co-option by elites.

Now, the irony of this is that I am writing in a blog - a medium, I have been informed, that is the most powerful force for free speech ever, as citizen journalists raze the ivory tower, etc. And blogging is all well and good - I read at least 5-10 regularly, and about 3 religiously. But it hasn't surpassed the barrier to entry problem. "Citizen Journalists" have descended into self-parody. Ideologically driven, irresponsible with the truth and, high-minded claims notwithstanding, essentially useless as journalists in any responsible sense of the word.

Why? Lack of time, for one thing. Lack of the infrastructure to report on anything not strictly local, lack of access to many important databases, lack of legal protection, inability to publicize one's ideas and reporting, inability to bundle one's content with similar ideas and reporting, isolation from the types of channels that assure access to the dominant media and ghettoization of the blogging world.

There have been some attempts to vault these barriers. Current TV produces some content (including the hilarious Target Women and That's So Gay), but leans heavily on links to the ideologically-similar Guardian. Talking Points Memo produces rather good content, but tends towards commentary. Overall, the role of new media seems to be as an adjunct to traditional media, rather than a replacement.

So, what will happen? Will traditional and new media reach a modus vivendi? Will traditional media collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, or will it rally and crush the usurpers?

I'm not sure of anything at this point.

Gore Vidal, and why do we still have aristocrats, anyway?

The obvious answer being, of course, "because we live in a society structured such that the rich and privileged tend to pass that on to their children, allowing them to take the time to be Olympic decathletes, friends with presidents, and famous men of letters."

I'm not at all surprised about the recent interview in the Times of London with Gore Vidal, where he predicts a dictatorship in the US and says that Americans "don’t have any thoughts, they have emotional responses."

This is, basically, the flip-side of the nuts on the Texas school board who want textbooks talking about creationism and southern pride. America is caught between our native aristocrats on the one hand and a vast anti-intellectual tradition on the other. It was reflected in the original design of the House and Senate with the House being elected directly by the fickle people for 2-year terms and the Senate being chosen by the state legislatures. And, to some extent, this is still the case. Political dynasties tend to be in the Senate, after all. But Vidal's contempt for, say, every American not fortunate enough to go to Phillips Exeter Academy is toxic. It's the kind of thinking that leads to, among other things, fascism.

When the elites take the contemptuous view of the rest of the country, we end up with demagogues wielding massive influence over factions of the population, and the "well, they deserve what they get" attitude from Vidal doesn't help. Fascism doesn't just spring fully-formed, it grows out of the cracks in public trust, which Vidal is helping to expand.

In my infirmity...

I've been watching a lot of West Wing. The cool fall weather and and the annual, cruddy fall cold means that I've been watching my favorite political drama. And recently, I saw the episode on PBS.

It is, and I say this with no exaggeration, a crime how little we fund and promote our public broadcasting.

I grew up on PBS and NPR. I have bright and clear memories of watching the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour with my dad everyday when he came home from work. I learned my letters and numbers from Sesame Street and my geography from the campy, live-action Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. My parents once, from somewhere, scraped up 100$ to sponsor an hour of the boring but classic Prairie Home Companion. I am conversant in classical music and was on the classic blues trip long before my friends, entirely due to public radio. Both my parents still send me clips and stories from NPR. Public Broadcasting is a good thing.

We don't value public broadcasting because we are, rightly, suspicious of government, and because we are, wrongly, suspicious of learning. If I were a genius, I'd invent a way to reconcile those. I always liked the NEA's slogan "A Great Nation Deserves Great Art," because I think it's true. Our greatness isn't international heft or economic clout, it's our spirit. I think, then, that a great nation deserves great public broadcasting.

Sweet, light crazy.

Anti-masonry has a long and distinguished history in the United States, and I am glad to see someone carrying that torch.

A slight issue with Politico.

From their piece on Tim Pawlenty:

Pawlenty, under the radar of D.C.’s political community, has locked up some of the key operatives who engineered then-President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign — a significant feat for a little-known Midwestern politician.

Emphasis added. If you believe the narrative that GWB was a dim-but-vaguely presidential cipher, this isn't a significant feat at all. Pawlenty has all the benefits of a first term Bush (with, I suppose, the exception of a famous name, but all of those seem pretty tapped out at this point). If you're looking for a nice, neutral conservative so you can continue your war on Americans making less than a cool million, I think Pawlenty's a good choice.

Of course, given how this year has been going for conservatives, I'm waiting for the inevitable revelations that he likes some sort of deviant sex.

God damned retrograde

John Derbyshire, British stick-up-the-ass conservative, has come out against the 19th Amendment. Really, it takes some balls to deny a basic right to half the population, so I would have to give him credit if it weren't such a self-evidently terrible idea, for a few reasons.

First, I'm just going to quote Amanda Marcotte, because she put it too well:

If you think you can just repeal half the population’s right to vote because you don’t like the outcome, then why even bother with democracy in the first place?

Second, it's a tactical mistake. Generally, politicians don't get elected on the basis of denying rights to the people who are voting for them. Given that women vote at a higher rate than men, any politician associating with Derbyshire or NRO should be toast after this.

Really, this should serve as a meditation on the fact that conservatism in this country isn't about returning to the mom and apple pie 1950s of legend, it's about returning us to the Gilded Age of horror stories.

Rally in Belleville.

By Nazis, quite literally, for white civil rights after a beating that the police apparently decided was not racially motivated.

The worst part is, 55% of people on the poll at the bottom said that the rally was a good thing.

Were I a paranoid sort

If I were the type to jump at shadows, I'd see a conspiracy here. First, Newsmax pulls an article (by a long-serving columnist) promoting a military coup, next Thomas Sowell at NRO compares the president to a "Latin American charismatic despot" and asks "do we want to become the world's largest banana republic?"

It's almost like they're laying bare their deepest desires.

Ok, still.

Maybe not, per this congressman, a holocaust, but 45,000 extra deaths a year is pretty substantial in a country that's supposed to be the greatest on earth.

Juggalos.

I was going to make fun of these, but I wish my subculture had a carnival like this every year. (Neither GenCon nor political conventions count).

To my liberal friends.

There are people out there who hate this country. There are people out there who are, literally, discussing the possibility of a military coup against a duly elected president as though it were a desirable outcome:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont.

Let's open that statement up. We are a mostly civilized republic with a set of democratic methods in place to choose our government. We do this every other year. We have changes in our legislative branch more frequently than any other civilized nation (British gov'ts are required to call elections every 5 years, The French are also on a 5 year cycle). And yet, there is talk that "patriotic general and flag officers [will] sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility." Let that sink in.

Has it? John L. Perry is advocating treason. There's no way around it. Despite his pro forma claim that "Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it," he is putting it on the table as a legitimate option. Newsmax speaks for a portion of the conservative base, one that's become more and more active of late. And why does he want a coup?

Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

Officers who failed to stage a coup after the Patriot Act, a far more destructive and unconstitutional measure than anything Obama has done or, really, is likely to do, was passed.

They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

Deficits run up by Geo. W. Bush, due mostly to his expansion of the class war against working Americans.

They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

Because we recently reaffirmed what we thought we could take for granted, and said that torture is something that Americans don't fucking do.

They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

Due, in no small part, to the gutting of the diplomatic corps and the waging of a war of choice which seemed to provoke no proto-treason from these alleged patriots.

They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

That last bit, by the way, makes this notional coup a sectional rebellion, which the founders were sure would end in tyranny. So, while I hope, and am fairly certain that Mr. Perry is just shooting his mouth off (as he has every right to do), I just want to point out that this is now on the table. Someone writing in a publication aimed at the conservative base has put out the idea that a military coup is a legitimate option.

Let's count all the successful democracies that have had military coups. Spain had one that ended in a bloody civil war followed by decades of fascism. England had its last one in 1688. Greece had one in 1967, and is still recovering. What in the fuck does me mean by "If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized?" What fantasy world is he living in?

Now, imagine for a second that the Nation published a piece like this in, say, February 2003. Can you imagine the condemnation and possibly criminal charges that would have covered them? Now, listen for the crickets about this piece.

I may be disappointed in my side sometimes, but I take comfort in knowing the "advocating treason" is not on our list of "things to do when we lose and election."

edit: Newsmax apparently scrubbed the column. Full text here.

hurr I'm a durr

You're probably not holding this kind of conference, for one thing.

Census Paranoia.

"I'm not saying that ..." seems to mean "I'm heavily implying but maintaining plausible deniability."
The batshittery over what is, after all, one of the few tasks explicitly given to the federal government weirds me.

New Blog?!

Let's see how long I can keep this one up. An outlet for my nerdy side.

In a Written Age

IOKIYAR

Isn't there a law against this? Or is it just in poor taste?

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has announced to National Review that he will be personally leading a "truth squad" to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, where he will make it clear to international leaders not to believe that the United States will pass legislation to deal with the issue.

It's nice to see how seriously foreign policy is taken these days -- when a member of the political minority will send his own delegation to an international conference, in order to undermine the government and tell other countries that they can't work with the United States.

Politics stops at the water's edge, indeed.

Update: According to the WSJ, from a column when someone they didn't like did this:

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, "without authority of the United States," to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government's behavior on any "disputes or controversies with the United States."